


call you darling, hold you tight

by epigraphs



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Morning After, all the conversations they need to have, post election night part II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25929397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epigraphs/pseuds/epigraphs
Summary: The alarm clock reads 6:47 in red, glowing numbers, and Mac squints at it from her vantage point on the bed, halfway on her side, her view slightly obstructed.
Relationships: Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 14
Kudos: 41





	call you darling, hold you tight

**Author's Note:**

> Will and Mac have had my heart since 2012, but Sorkin dialogue scares the shit out of me, so writing them has taken a good while.
> 
> This is, predictably, set right after Election Night. I’ve always wondered what the conversation looked like when they were finally alone and had slept some, because everything in the episode moved so so fast.
> 
> Thank you to A for looking this over. Title is from “Saying Your Names,” by Richard Siken — I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

The alarm clock reads _6:47_ in red, glowing numbers, and Mac squints at it from her vantage point on the bed, halfway on her side, her view slightly obstructed. The room is still blanketed in half-dark; slivers of early sunlight are just barely peeking out from between the heavy curtains that cover the floor-to-ceiling windows.

If she concentrates and goes just a little bit cross-eyed, she can see the dust particles dancing in the light. 

It’s quiet, and everything feels dampened somehow, like she’s in a bubble and the city outside has been shut out entirely. No early-morning traffic, no sirens and honking, no shouting from the street corner, boisterous _hellos_ and barking dogs and people picking fights. No cacophony and symphony of New York in the morning, a wakeup call from the city that never sleeps.

It’s quiet, save for Mac’s own breathing, shallow and even, and Will’s too, right by her ear. There’s an arm slung across her torso, warm and heavy, gripping her hip gently, as if to anchor her and make sure she doesn’t disappear. When she first cracked her eyes open, the weight on her stomach startled her, made her breath hitch and her heart beat a staccato rhythm in her chest.

For a second, she went rigid, and she was right back in Afghanistan, the heat and the dust and the swell of the desert as vivid as ever, the shouting, and the terror on Jim’s face, and something pinning her down to the ground. For a second, she was paralyzed. 

The softness of the sheets and the gentle snore from Will’s general direction snapped her out of it, pulled her back into the present, into the early morning half-light and the comfortable warmth radiating from his body. 

It all came back to her in an instant: getting fired, getting proposed to, getting to kiss Will for the first time in five years, getting hugged by Charlie and Sloan and Jim and Don, getting into the car to his apartment, and finally, getting to fall apart completely in the safety of his arms.

Now, as her eyes catch the glint of the ring on her finger, she’s hit again with the weight of what happened last night. She got _engaged_ — and she got fired, though she’s beginning to question the permanence of that — and Obama won again and Will forgave her and now she’s naked between his sheets, mind reeling but feeling safer than she has in a long time. 

Mac knows it’s early, that no one expects them to come in today, that she could (and honestly should) go back to sleep, that she’s put more stress on her body in the last few weeks and months than is healthy for anyone. She won’t pretend that she’s ever really slept well, or long, especially since she fled New York for the desert, fled Will. 

She’s lucky when she manages four hours uninterrupted, sometimes five, without any dreams. She got one of those white noise machines once, and essential oils at the behest of a well-meaning friend she was close with _before,_ but neither did anything to calm her fitful sleep. 

Mac had hoped, in that naive way she swore she’d given up on the minute she broke Will’s heart, that maybe his presence would be enough to chase the demons away. But — now she glances at the clock again — it’s 6:55 and they fell asleep sometime around quarter to five, and it would have been too easy anyway, to pretend that everything is fixed now, that it’s all okay.

There’s still an orange bottle of pills in her work bag and a matching set in her apartment, and she thinks about the fact that while other women get a drawer for knickers and a spare toothbrush by the sink, she’ll need space in his medicine cabinet instead. 

There’s still a scar, raised and puckering, that snakes its way across her abdomen, that hurts some days and reminds her of a time when she’d rather have bled than faced another day.

There’s still five years of hurt and betrayal to make up for, three years of longing, two years of learning how to coexist in the same space.

There’s still so much work to do. 

But there’s also Will’s mussed hair on the pillow next to her, Will’s soft snoring in her ear, Will’s ring on her finger. And right now, that just might be enough. 

Mac gingerly shifts so she can see him better, can study his face and catalogue the changes. He’s older and she is too, but in sleep he’s still the Billy she met all those years ago, who made her laugh and smile and feel like she was the most precious thing on the planet. 

She wonders if he still feels that way — if he ever could again. 

There are more wrinkles on his face, frown lines and evidence of long nights and too much scotch to wash it all away. They’re not getting any younger, the both of them. They’ve both got baggage to carry and she wonders if that’s why Will went from zero to one hundred and skipped all the middle steps.

Why there’s a ring on her finger and no clothes in his drawer, why they’ve got to set a date before they’ve gone out on one. 

“You’re thinking. ’S too early for thinking.”

Will’s raspy voice, still thick with the vestiges of sleep, snaps her out of it. She tilts her head to meet his eyes, sees the slow, sleepy smile spread across his face, even as his brow remains furrowed and he pulls her closer on instinct.

“Go back to sleep,” she murmurs into the slope of his collarbone, because she knows Will needs it as much as she does. She’s not the only one who’s been running on fumes lately. 

“Hmmph.” Will’s grip on her waist tightens and she can’t help but chuckle at the sound. She remembers this side of him; the gruff, sleepy side that’s so different from the intensity of Will anywhere else — in the courtroom, the newsroom. Mac likes that she gets to see all of him, that he shows her. 

She feels him start to card his fingers through her hair and she lets herself melt under his touch, calloused fingers moving ever so gently. Yesterday (or this morning, really) it had been heated and fast, the true definition of “quick and dirty,” and she’d relished in it. They’d both needed the release. 

Now, there’s no rush; they don’t have to do anything at all except lie here and relearn each other. 

“We’re getting married,” Will whispers in her ear, low and reverent, like he can’t quite believe it. She can’t either, not really. 

She hums. “We are.”

He shifts them so they’re both on their sides, pillows placed strategically to support their aching joints (they’re _old_ now, she can’t help but think, weary in both body and mind). She meets his eyes and feels a slow smile spreading across her face, a mirror image to his. Will catches her hand, twines their fingers together and brings them up to his mouth, kissing the back of her palm. 

“You kept the ring,” she rasps, eyes fixed on the diamond that sparkles in the early morning light. It’s big and ostentatious and it would feel fake coming from anyone else but Will. She knows he bought it to make a point — and a terrible one at that — but he’s too sincere not to have meant it. 

“I did.” He traces over the stone with his thumb. “You said yes.”

“I did.”

She did, she did say yes, and she’s honestly still a bit shell-shocked, that she didn’t question anything, just let it happen and jumped straight into the deep end. 

“Why?” Her eyes snap up to meet his. 

“Why what?”

“Mackenzie,” he says, in that low way that makes her toes curl. “You know what. Why did you say yes?”

“Will, I—”

“Mac, I fired you. I fired you and I yelled at you and I hurt you, over and over again. You hurt me once, a long time ago, but I’ve hurt you back so many times.” 

“I know.” It’s true, and she won’t go pretending he didn’t. “What made you stop?”

“Charlie. And I realized that except for the one thing you did wrong, you did everything right.”

Mac lets out a chuckle. Of course. 

“Billy,” she says, tangling their calves together. She needs to feel connected to him, in every way she can. She smoothes out a wrinkle by his eye. “I said yes because I know you. Do you still hate me?”

“What?” He looks so incredulous she could laugh. “Mac, no, I could never… God, I was an ass—”

“See?” She laces their fingers together, squeezes tight. “That’s why.”

He moves to kiss her, parting the seam of her lips with his tongue, languid but still full of longing. Mac presses herself flush against him, feels the heat of his body and the rising warmth of her own. 

Will rolls them so he’s above her, and there’s an awed look in his eyes, like he can’t believe they’re here, in his bed, drenched in slivers of morning sunlight. “You’re gorgeous,” he says, all reverence and disbelief, and Mac feels herself flush, from the tips of her ears down her chest. 

She doesn’t look like she did five years ago, when there weren’t such deep wrinkles on her forehead, scars on her abdomen and legs. She’s gotten softer around the edges, and she wonders for a fleeting second if Will has noticed, if he cares. 

He’s busy laving kisses on her collarbone, along the line of freckles just above her left breast. He moves slowly, with utmost care, like he’s a cartographer and she’s unexplored territory. Or maybe he’s refamiliarizing himself with old terrain. 

He trails kisses down past her navel, takes a left turn toward the ridge of her scar and Mac sucks in a breath. Before, when they’d been desperate, he hadn’t brought it up at all. Now, he’s running a fingertip over the raised flesh, his touch featherlight, leaving goosebumps in his wake. 

“Mac,” he whispers. “I—”

“It’s okay,” she says, placing one hand on his shoulder, squeezing once, twice. It is, really. Despite the lingering pain, despite all the prescriptions, despite everything. 

“I had no idea. I didn’t want to know. Charlie told me your team got hurt, but he said there were no casualties and I decided that was good enough.”

“I know, Will. It’s okay.”

“But it shouldn’t be! I should have read your emails or answered your calls and generally given a damn, but I didn’t because I thought the _one_ thing you did warranted years of retaliation. Honey, I’m so sorry—”

She pulls his face between her hands and kisses him, hard, trapping his words between them. This time, _she’s_ the one to roll them over, straddling him and pushing his back down on the mattress. “I’m okay, Will. I forgave you a long time ago.”

All the years and all the pain didn’t rob her of anything, and she needs him to understand that. 

It didn’t break her; _he_ didn’t break her.

She bends down and captures his lips with her own, raking her short nails through his scalp and relishing in the fact that he shudders. His hands come up to grip her hips, and he pulls her up his chest, higher, higher.

“Will,” she manages, in between kisses. 

“Let me,” he says, a wicked glint in his eye. So she does. 

After, she feels like jelly, boneless and spent and utterly exhausted. Will looks similarly wrecked and it makes her smile. 

“We’re still good at this,” she muses, a shit-eating grin on her face. She hasn’t felt like this in forever, and she’s sure she’ll be sore for days. Worth it.

“Did you ever doubt it?” Will turns his head toward her, but the rest of his body stays splayed across the bed like a starfish. She’s never been more glad he makes enough money to afford a California king.

“Well, you’ve certainly had plenty of opportunities to keep up your game.” Mac makes sure to keep her tone light and teasing; she knows how fast Will spirals straight into guilt and she doesn’t want that, not now when everything is easy and the world outside this bed doesn’t exist. 

He hums. “Would it be more romantic if I said I’d just remembered every inch of you, for all these years?”

He says it like it’s a joke, but she suspects it’s true. Her heart clenches in her chest at the thought of this man, at the thought of once having thrown all of this away and still, somehow, having gotten it back again. 

“I love you,” she says, because there’s nothing else to say. “So much.”

“I love you too.”

She thought she could live her life without him at her side for a while, forced herself to, unwilling to hope for anything more. She’d done this to herself after all, self-inflicted wounds she didn’t feel were worthy of bandages. 

But every one of his words is like a balm, like stitches closing up her heart and making her feel whole again. She didn’t realize she put herself in purgatory until his proposal opened up a way out. 

Mackenzie prides herself on her independence, fierce and true. She wouldn’t be a McHale without it, and she knows Will knows that too. Still, lying here in this bed with this man, she thinks that sometimes, it’s easier to go through life as a team.

Her mind drifts to the lawsuit, the retraction, Dantana, all of it, and she forces herself to stop thinking about any of it. That’s a problem for tomorrow; for her and Will and Charlie to talk about at the newsroom, when they’re no longer hungover and lying naked between Will’s sheets.

Instead, she takes stock of Will’s room; she’s been in his new apartment a handful of times, but she’s never taken the time to appreciate it fully. It’s… impersonal, compared to his old place, compared to hers. It’s like he didn’t want the decorator (he has to have hired one) to know who he really was. 

Still, it surprises her sometimes, how far they’ve both gotten. 

“When did we become these expensive people?” she asks, gesturing around at the room, all dark woods and glass and Egyptian cotton sheets. 

“We got old, Mac,” he says, matter of fact. “We got old and I’ve got a face for TV.”

She snorts, shoves him once; he winces and laughs and pulls her close.

“What a pair we make.”

“Am I still Don Quixote’s donkey?” Will asks, and Mac laughs.

“You’re stubborn enough for it, that’s for sure.”

“Hey!” He pinches her thigh and she yelps. No fair. “God, you’re going to be _unbearable_ in my ear from now on, aren’t you?”

She moves so she’s propped up on her elbows, the sheet pooling around her waist. With any other guy, she’d have gone in search for a shirt a long time ago — one of his, probably, because she knows guys like that and she likes the fact that they swallow her small frame — but with Will, she doesn’t care. 

She doesn’t feel exposed; with him, she feels safe.

Mac takes Will in, his chest that’s covered with a light dusting of hair, the hickey she sucked into the skin under his collarbone, like a teenager who needs to make sure the whole school knows her boyfriend is really hers. 

“Have you already conveniently forgotten about that time when you fired me—” she checks an imaginary watch, “—just hours ago?”

Will groans. “God, I’m an idiot, aren’t I?”

Mac smirks, pleased as punch. “Maybe just a little bit.”

“I didn’t mean it, obviously,” he rushes out, before catching her glance and quickly correcting himself. “Well, I did then but I don’t now. Fuck, I’m sorry I did that.”

“Is this you re-hiring me?” Mac laughs. This might be the strangest job offer she’s ever gotten — naked in bed after EP’ing the show in question.

“This is me un-firing you, and apologizing for ever firing you in the first place.”

“Good.”

“You own me, remember? And not just for an hour a day.”

She hums, self-satisfied. “I’m glad you’ve come to realize that, Billy. You were a little slow on the uptake there.”

Will snorts. “You’re impossible.”

“But I’m yours.”

The smile on his face is like the sun. 

Mac steals another glance at his clock, reads _8:13_ and wonders how long they can hide out here, away from the world. They’ll need food eventually, she supposes, but until then, she sees no reason to move. Instead, she pillows her head on Will’s chest and sighs as he gathers her up in his arms before pulling the sheet back over them. 

“Go back to sleep, sweetheart,” he whispers. 

And she does.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/_bucketofrice) and [Tumblr](https://www.goodthingscomeinthrees.tumblr.com), come say hi!


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